Individuals are often faced with the dilemma of what to eat or cook for a particular meal. In today's society where families consist of either two working spouses or a single working parent, such a decision may cause extra dilemma and stress on the parent who comes home from a long day at work and tackles the decision of what to make for dinner. Thus, if the parent gets home from work around dinner time, he or she may opt for something simple and quick. As a consequence, the family's menu is unimaginative, and the family typically ends up eating the same food over and over again.
Even if the parent wants to prepare a new dish, he or she may be faced with the dilemma of finding a recipe that will cater to the family's tastes. Furthermore, even if a recipe is selected, the ingredients needed to prepare the meal may not be available at home. Given the busy schedule of today's parents, it is not practical for the parent to make trips to the supermarket each time an ingredient is needed.
Generally, many people schedule shopping trips for once a week. In order to make such shopping trips as productive as possible, the parent often investigates prior to the trip what items need to be replenished and what new items need to be purchased based on the recipes to be prepared that week. Many parents spend considerable amounts of time making shopping lists based on these investigations.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method for recommending recipes to users that are catered to the tastes of such users and/or the tastes of their family. Such a system and method should further automatically provide a shopping list of ingredients necessary for creating one or more of the recommended recipes. The shopping list should be made available to the user during or prior to his or her regular shopping trip.